1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a test device and method for checking whether Digital Signal Processor Integrated Circuits (DSP ICs) and a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) containing the ICs contain a fault in the assembled PCB product.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, many ICs for DSP have been assembled compositely on a PCB in a digital video apparatus for use in processing digital signals. Such ICs are subject to testing to determine whether they are faulty using a specific IC test equipment before the ICs are assembled on the PCB. The test to determine whether the IC is defective has usually been made by checking only a single IC prior to its integration with other ICs.
The conventional IC test equipment can be classified as a signal generator portion and a signal analyzer portion. The signal generator is designed to output a signal suitable to test each IC property in order to check both whether the fabricated IC is bad and whether an error occurred in the design and development stage. The signal analyzer is designed to analyze a result when a test signal generated from the signal generator is input to the IC to be tested.
However, this known type of IC test equipment requires separate preparation for each IC and can only be used to check a single IC prior to its integration with other components. Therefore, in the assembled state of PCB on which various ICs are mounted in a complicated manner, it is impossible to test for a fault in an IC by using the conventional IC test equipment. The testing of assembled ICs is important because the component parts may suffer damage or an error may be generated when connecting ICs on the PCB during manufacturing or a defect may occur when depositing and transporting products containing the ICs. However, prior to this invention, there was no method of checking for IC damage in the assembled DSP products.